Heating a metal object is often desired to change properties of the metal object. For example, heating a metal object may help to harden a metal, soften a metal, and/or reduce material stress within a metal. These various types of heat treatments are often referred to as annealing.
One particular metal object that is often heat treated is a cartridge case. Cartridge cases are generally processed in a mass manner. That is, each step of forming or preparing a cartridge case for use in an ammunition round is often performed substantially simultaneously on a large number of cartridge cases. For example, in cartridge case annealing processes a number of cartridge cases are often heated in an oven at the same time. After a step, such as an anneal step, the cartridge cases may be dumped into large bins for transfer to a separate location for the next step or process.